31 Days Challenge Theme
by froodlemonkey
Summary: Written for the October challenge prompts on the 31 days Livejournal community
1. Prompt: Relevant to my interests

"Based on your previous purchases, we think you may like..."

"Lame," said Marshall, scrolling down Amazon's list of suggested titles. "Lame, lame, l- seriously, Sleepaway Summer Slaughterhouse Seven? I didn't even know there was a third.."

He sighed and minimized the browser window, pushing away from the computer desk to stretch his legs out before him with a put-upon sigh. It was looking more and more like this Halloween's entertainment selection would comprise the same old favourites from previous years, plus a few quickly-forgotten lacklustre offerings scrounged up from the bargain bin at the World o' Stuff and left in a garbage sack outside Goodwill by November 1st.

The problem was that nobody knew how to make a good, old-fashioned monster movie anymore. These days it was all about implacable masked serial killers chasing groups of screaming teenagers down a succession of otherwise-deserted corridors under the flickering glare of conveniently-malfunctioning fluorescents. What was the point of a movie where the only way to defeat the villain was pushing him out of a window, onto a bomb, then dismembering him with a chainsaw that for some reason happened to be on fire, only to have him return in the next instalment anyway?

A few weeks later, thanks to a combination of drunk highschool kids, a ouija board, and a cemetery that was considered creepy and shunnable even by Eerie's lax standards for such things, the ghost of Eerie's most notorious axe murderer, Stabbity Steve, rose from his unmarked shallow grave and wrecked bloody havoc for three consecutive nights.

The first night, Marshall lured him into a pit full of broken glass, barbed wire and iron spikes, doused in holy water, and still ended up crashing his car on the drive home when Steve appeared in the road in front of him.

On the second night, Dash helped him burn down the mental hospital where Stabbity had spent the final years of his mortal life, having been found not guilty of his heinous crimes by reason of insanity. The evening's adventure culminated in five hours spent listening to Sergeant Knight recite detailed personal information about them in a monotone voice while sat in the drunk tank of the Eerie Jail.

When dusk fell on day three of Stabbity Steve's reign of terror, Simon showed up with a bunch of books on the theory of film making as it pertained to the horror genre, gave Syndi a flamethrower and a shard of glass wrapped in duct tape at one end, and sent her out into the night. She returned less than thirty minutes later, covered in blood and grumbling about ridiculous out-dated notions of "purity", and dragging Steve's severed head behind her in a burlap sack. When Mars asked her how it went, she threw the head at him, and it exploded in a shower of ectoplasmic goo that took three days to wash out of his hair.

After salting the earth over Stabbity Steve's final resting place, but before retreating to the couch to recover from various bruises, cuts, burns, broken limbs and psychological traumas, Mars logged into his Amazon account, selected next-day guaranteed delivery, and purchased every single title the website recommended.


	2. Prompt: Good secrets are hard to keep

He'd not intended to keep it a secret, in the beginning. The first time he'd seen Bigfoot rummaging through the neatly-bagged detritus of the Teller's Saturday brunch, he'd gone running to his parents before he'd even thought to reach for the Polaroid. By the time they followed him out to the curb, the sasquatch had already fled with their bacon rinds and pancake batter, leaving only a scattering of trash that Marilyn and Edgar had blamed on raccoons.

He'd started locking the Evidence Locker after he came home from school one day to find Syndi and two of her friends poking through it, while Syndi did unflattering impressions of her crazy little brother and his weird alien-monster-pod-people obsession. Their parents make her apologise and forbid her to go into the attic without asking Marshall's permission first, but veto him fitting a lock on the attic door. Instead, he keeps the key to the evidence locker on a chain around his neck at all times, and not even Simon has a copy.

When Marilyn comes within a hairs-breadth of joining the Cult of Foreverware, he thought his theories might finally start gaining some traction with her. Instead, every time he brings it up, she hugs him and ruffles his hair and tells him that sometimes adults find it just as difficult as kids when it came to making new friends in a strange place, and not to worry, and asks if he'd like to have Simon over for dinner.

By the time it's him and Steve and Simon facing off against a canine uprising, the concept of getting help from the Eerie police makes as much sense to him as dancing a tango on the moon. Still, it hits him like a punch in the gut when, at the height of the Harvest King debacle, he realises that some of Eerie's adults aren't oblivious to, or even complacent about, but actively complicit in the weirdness infecting his new home town.

So the Evidence Locker remains padlocked, and the attic becomes the Secret Spot, and if Simon is too young and Dash too cynical to understand exactly how betrayed he felt to discover that Eerie's town elders already knew about werewolves and were even feeding them on a regular basis, at least there are two people in the world he can share Eerie's secrets with.

Still, it's such a big secret to only split three ways, and when his college newspaper invites submissions for short stories themed around the paranormal for it's special Halloween edition, Marshall can't resist.

A week later, he's eating lunch on the lawn outside the administrative buildings when an old-fashioned patrol car covered in dozens of antennae pulls up, and Mars realises that he might not be far enough away from Eerie after all.


	3. Prompt: Down the rabbit hole

It was autumn, and the trees blazed red and gold against the duck egg blue sky. The sun was a bright circle of pale yellow low on the horizon, and wispy streamers of cloud scudded swiftly by high overhead. There was a thin layer of frost on the pavement, but it was already begining to melt as the low sun bathed everything in a clear, cool light, and the air was crisp and fresh and still carried the faint hint of last night's bonfires.

Already thin ribbons of smoke were rising from some of the chimneys and the smell of woodsmoke, warming and homey, drifted down the street to where a teenaged boy with premature grey hair huddled in his over-sized trenchcoat and tried without success to supress a sneeze.

The door to the Teller house banged open, and Simon and Marshall bounded down the front steps to leap feet-first into a neatly raked pile of dead leaves on the edge of the lawn. A moment later, Edgar Teller's half-exasperated, half-laughing shout of "Boys!" came from the half-open living room window.

"Sorry, Dad!" Mars yelled back, not sounding even a little apologetic.

Marilyn Teller appeared in the doorway, shaking her head, and stepped out into the chilly morning. Her hair was tied back off her face in a messy ponytail and she was wearing one of her husband's old sweatshirts, folded and double-folded and pushed up to her elbows. Her breath steamed in the frosty air and she hugged herself against the cold.

"Marshall!" she said, her tone chiding. "Your father just swept those yesterday."

"Sorry, Mom," Marshall replied, a half-second after Simon's own, "Sorry, Mrs. Teller."

Marilyn sighed.

"Come back inside and have some cocoa," she said. "Then you can clean this mess up before you head out on your latest paranormal adventure."

"Yes, Mom," said Mars, but he stomped and jumped about in the crunching, crackling pile a few more times before he actually obeyed.

As he passed his mother, she reached out to ruffle his hair affectionately. She was pulling the door closed behind her two errant boys when she spotted Dash standing across the street and waved him over.

"Mars has a couple of chores to take care of before he can come out," she explained, shooting her son a wry look. Marshall, for his part, looked like he wanted to die at how embarrasing his mother was being. "Why don't you come in and have a hot drink while you wait?"

SInce he woke up in Eerie, Dash had encountered more than his fair share of the unknown, the unexpected, and the just plain unexplainable. But werewolves, larcenous ghosts, brain-swapping tape decks and colliding parallel realities had never made him as nervous as the entirely unfamiliar sensation of being invited into the warmth and noise of the Teller's home for the very first time.


End file.
